1980 The Gwangju Democratization Movement, a nine-day popular uprising in Gwangju against President Chun Doo-hwan’s military dictatorship, is violently crushed by the South Korean army.

After a breakdown in the late 1970s, Lee begins to paint with loose, dynamic brushstrokes. This new approach will lead to two major series of works of the next decade,From Winds and With Winds.

Lee moves to Kamakura, a twelfth-century city near Tokyo, where he currently resides.

1984–85 Lee’s sculptures take a dynamic turn, incorporating curved steel panels with jagged edges propped between and around stones. These new Relatum works are first displayed in solo exhibitions at Galerie de Paris in 1984 and Kamakura Gallery, Tokyo, in 1985

1986 Numerous important museum exhibitions further establish Lee and Mono-ha on an international stage, includingJapon des avant-gardes 1910–1970 at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. The exhibition coincides with a display of Lee’s watercolors and drawings from 1964 to 1986 in the Pompidou’s permanent-collection galleries.

1988 Lee is featured in Monoha: La scuola delle cose at the Museo Laboratorio di Arte Contemporanea in Rome.

Lee presents solo exhibitions in Japan and Europe, including Traces of Sensibility and Logic at the Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu, Japan, and Ex Oriente at the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan. The Ex Oriente catalogue includes an essay by French critic Pierre Restany and Italian translations of Lee’s short essays.

South Korea hosts the Olympic Games in Seoul. This international platform helps the nation’s transition from a military dictatorship to a democracy gain momentum. North Korea boycotts the games after their demands to jointly host are largely denied by the International Olympic Committee. These Olympics are the last that the Soviet Union and East Germany participate in before their dissolution.

1989 The Berlin Wall falls after radical political changes in East Germany and subsequent weeks of intense civil unrest. German reunification formally concludes in 1990.

Emperor Hirohito dies, ending a sixty-three-year reign and triggering calls by China and Korea for Japanese apologies and retributions for damages wrought during World War II.

1990 Lee is included in Minimal Art, the first comparative exhibition of Mono-ha and Minimalism, organized by Tatehata Akira at the National Museum of Art, Osaka.

Lee mounts his first solo exhibition at Ingong Gallery in Seoul, founded by Hwang Hyunwook, who introduces Lee to Donald Judd and Richard Long.

The French Ministry of Culture names Lee a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

1991–93 Lee’s continuing interest in the mediation between the painted and unpainted ground of his canvases leads to his Correspondance series. These works feature a few gray brushstrokes rhythmically placed on large white canvases or multiple, screenlike panels. The first major presentation from this series occurs at Lee’s solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura, in 1993.

1994 Lee stages multiple solo shows, including large-scale exhibitions at the Fondazione Mudima, Milan, and at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, in Gwacheon.

Lee is included in the exhibitionJapanese Art after 1945: Scream Against the Sky, a landmark in introducing postwar Japanese art to American audiences. Curated by Alexandra Munroe, the show opens at the Yokohama Museum of Art before traveling to the Guggenheim Museum SoHo, New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

1995 Lee is featured in Matter and Perception 1970: Mono-ha and the Search for Fundamentals at the Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu, Japan. The exhibition travels to the Musée d’Arte Moderne de Saint-Étienne Métropole, France, and is accompanied by the most comprehensive catalogue on the movement to date.

1996 Lisson Gallery, London, publishes a collection of Lee’s writings in English, Selected Writings by Lee Ufan 1970–96, to accompany his first exhibition at the gallery.

1997 Lee becomes the first Asian artist to be the subject of a solo exhibition at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume de Paris. The exhibition includes paintings from the Correspondance series.

At the recommendation of Alfred Pacquement, director of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Lee is invited to serve as a visiting professor at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris.

1998–99 Lee’s exhibitions in Germany increase in frequency, including shows at the Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt, in 1998 and at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, in 1999.

2000 Kim Daejung, president of South Korea since 1997 and an iconic figure in the country’s transition to democracy, wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to achieve peace and reconciliation with North Korea.

Lee publishes a new anthology of writings, The Art of Yohaku, in Tokyo.

Lee is awarded the UNESCO Prize at the Shanghai Biennale.

Cover of the catalogue for the exhibition Lee Ufan: 1973–2001, Kunstmuseum Bonn, June 17–September 9, 2001

2001 Lee is awarded the Ho-Am Prize by the Samsung Foundation in Korea.

Lee Ufan, The Art of Encounter (2004). Published on the occasion of Lee’s exhibition at Lisson Gallery, London, January 21–February 28, 2004

2004 Lisson Gallery publishes The Art of Encounter, an English language anthology of Lee’s critical writings, with a revised and expanded version appearing in 2008. The book plays a key role in introducing criticism and other art writing from a contemporary Asian artist’s perspective to the Euro-American public.

2005 Lee’s solo exhibition, The Art of Margins, at the Yokohama Museum of Art, opens to wide praise.

2006 Lee’s Correspondance paintings evolve into a new, separate series of works entitled Dialogue, which expand on his interest in activating “the living composition of empty spaces.”

2007Resonance, Lee’s solo exhibition of paintings and sculptures at the 52nd Venice Biennale, receives great critical acclaim. The exhibition arranges his sculptures and paintings, including dramatically lit works executed directly on the wall, in a fourteenth-century Italian palazzo and courtyard.